The welcome mat on my pelvis and 
the scar that is the front door. 

My tongue is a red door.
Thick entrance of a church
-- heavy slammed-- stained glass
glasses into the congregation--
shut to shutter in the pews-- 
and waiting there's a choir 
in those baptism robes
with the chord belts
they tied in knots
and knots and "do-nots"
numbered to ten in stone--
Moses said we only have ten rules
and Jesus gave us two
and we spent an existence
finding new ways to break down red doors
and drip God-blood into chalices--
You know there's something
beautiful about that and 
I like my tongue to be red
my lips top be red
my fingers to be red
and I like my church doors red--

The choir laughs and tells us that
every door means welcome
if you paint it red-- red-red
blood-red wine-red- Lutheran-red
red like every opening in my face--
punch my nose like a door knob red--
wipe your shoes on my hips--
the front step of my pelvis reads
"welcome home" because
I have learned that home is a 
place other people make with 
my body-- a place to leave
car keys dangle from my ears--

I know I am supposed to be
an hourglass who forgets
everything about time-- I learned
to count grains of coffee cake crumbs the size
of sand-- eat only 
potato chips of lettuce
from the crouched 
corner of a cage full of hay--
but I'm red-- DAMN IT-- and 
I'm blood-red, scab-red
fat hot-house tomato red
and boiled crab-red--

I'm not a stamp collection of scars.
This isn't a museum.
It's not a "pay-what-you-can"--
it's a tongue that's a red door.
I could paint a night sky
with all this red front door
in me-- I'm not just a 
place to wipe your sandals--
call me refuge-- call me
forgiven-- call me
confessional without 
a wall or a priest-- call me declaration
of loving everything but my
own hips--

I'm just asking 
that you leave
the scars where they are
and close the front door
gently. 
It's heavy.

The side of the bowl and other places
I learned to crack an egg.

Smashed under the seat cushion--quiet
sneaky as an umbilical chord
tight around my wrists-- the friendship
bracelet woven by my father
the 'X' stitching-- through my
fingers-- the white veil-- virgin
bride of the egg-- who here
hasn't asked their mother if there are
baby chickens inside egg yolks
in side apple pies
in side cupcakes
inside the birds nest
of a slice of wheat toast
slippery from butter and birth--
where else have we cracked like
ladies? Are we the closed egg
shell-- gentle-- refrigerated--
the lonely grocery bag on top
of the potato rolls-- 
we say-- 

NO there are no chickens
in cupcakes cakes and birthdays
and apple pie and frittata--
the asparagus 
quiche I wear like a sun hat--

We aren't just for babies
but they taught us about the sides
of the bowl when we were little
and too little to know anything about
blood. 
Just little enough to know
that baking was something
mother could do without the back
of a box-- something we knew
about-- listened for how
many eggs to crack on the edge
of the metal bowl-- swollen like
flour and bread loaves--

How many of us have thought we were dying or
sunny side up in the passenger seat?
How many of us have remembered that
our eyes are the openings to
ovens?

Save only the yolks
and crack-- snap-- rapture 
on the paper towel-- he
told me that's how you do it
so it's quiet
he told me that there's nothing
you can do but break
and you're going to break somehow
so why not go 
quietly in the muffle of a paper
towel instead of on the side of
a bowl-- loud and clumsy 
like small hands and
birthdays.

We all knew baking was as inevitable 
as paper towels and napkins 
and the whites of eggs--

scramble me with ketchup and blood
whisk my veil to a lather
to wash me in air-- I was fancy
enough for frittatas 
and homey enough for ketchup--
bold enough to crack
on the counter top and
pull the feathers out of
my cupcakes.  

Star burst blood vessels and the distance
between the porch and the moon.

Naked-legged I sit on the concrete
porch-- squat and sturdy like a toad--
like a foot rest full of melting
unread-- "funny" sections-- yellow
like my teeth in the morning.
I drink coffee like blood transfusion--
like eye lids-- like the night
when I always end up naked-legged--
underwear brighter when you turn
off the porch lamps. Sometimes
I wonder why we didn't teach our eyes
about the night-- the soup I sink 
in on the porch that is both shiny 
and liquid like a raining star--
the sleet is only a fragment--
we never lose the stars during the
day we just haven't trained our eyes to
see them. I'm teaching my self with
the porch light off-- blink like a 
toad only to feel your teeth
rake against my skin-- the mosquitoes
laugh at me sitting with no
pants and a knit cap drooping from my
head-- they laugh and guzzle 
my coffee like blood transfusion--
laugh and talk about how silly it
is for humans to try to see at night
when they've never even drank blood
or touched the moon. I say LOOK and I reach
up-- I touch the moon with an index finger--
and tell them I know things are ALWAYS
short and far and closer than ever before.
And a star falls. And my legs burst into
nebula or island or blood-freckle--
lay out on the porch-- pomegranate-seed
squash in the domains of my thighs--
I'm breaking like the edges of the moon
on the porch-- like the blue berry heels
like the stars that find a way to rain.
I'm sitting on unread "funny" sections 
and laughing with the mosquitoes at jokes
I don't understand-- but for some reason
laughing makes them funny.
I'm laughing at the moon
who never gets any jokes because
she's just too far away to hear
the ending-- turn the porch light on
so that there's something for
the mosquitoes to bang their heads again other
than my legs.
We're so close tonight.
So near.
So far. 

Selkie:
a mythical creature 
that resembles a seal in the water 
but assumes human form on land

The selkie in night slippers who took a bite out of the moon.

They say our husbands
hide our seal skin but I don't need
a husband to have a closet to keep it in--
folded neatly like pajama pants 
or a night robe with a hood
to pull over my eyes-- my nose
washed in the stale soap of the bog
-- worn thin by unwanted kisses
and chlorine-- the open necktie--
unknown-- untied-- tied wrong
like a bow or a braid--
my father wore this skin and peeled
it off like the graceless ribbon of a potato
Everyone learned I was a selkie when they dropped
me in the baptismal fountain and had to fish
me out with a crab net--
said it was a shame that the priest 
had become too old
to hold babies-- I was
the type of baby that couldn't be held--
slippery-- garden hose necked--
so by the time the nun got me from the bottom
of the fountain it
was too late and the church had
already all seen me as a seal--
my parents were embarrassed and we
left after communion.
My grandfather knew and left
me to soak in a plastic pool on the
porch-- fed me Ritz crackers 
while I lay on my belly--
naked like baptism-- like salad
dressing-- like stale soap--
he was fascinated and kept a daily
general of the seal child-- told
me to never let them take
the skin away from me-- I was
rain forest baby-- born of 
the down pours that feed into the
salt wounds of the sea where
I will eventually return.
I've been trying to get back there
since I was baptized--
Sometimes I'm scared the next time
I go to the ocean that I won't be able
to become human again--
the chlorine-- the Swedish fish--
the board walk with it's planks of
thick-cut French fries-- cheese sauce-- 
blood-- ketchup or hot sauce on my snout--
and I'll come ashore only
to find that I'm still
shiny and thick-tailed-- whiskers
prickly like my led hairs--
do you smell the chlorine on my skin?
the soap?
the worries?
I keep all this in the pockets
of my night robe-- 
I think my roommate knows
about my seal skin-- I think
she notices me put on my
floral night robe instead of
the seal skin each time after a shower
when I feel the water calling me home.
I can hear the rivers start to whisper
across mainstreet and in my on whiskers--
I walk out humid into the night--

Confront the moon.
Tell her she pulls me.
Tell her I know that the
time will come when I return
to the ocean for good
but that for tonight I will
be able to take off the skin
again-- pluck the whiskers from
my face-- stumble-- fumble for
the feeling of two legs again by 
the beacon light on the porch
in my slippers.
Before I leave I'll take a bite from
the moon because it tastes
like the ocean-- Swedish fish
melted in chlorine-- French fries
held together by blood 
or ketchup or cheese.

I don't tell you this to scare you
or brag about knowing what the moon
tastes like. It's not a warning or a cause
for alarm. My return to the ocean
is not something to fear because it
is as inevitable as humidity and unpredictable
as French fries. I tell you so 
you know where I went
when you wake up in August to 
an empty bed after the full-belly
of the moon. 

Breakfast with ghosts and 
the length of the upstairs hallway.

My belief in ghosts is as strong
as my belief in mornings
and my belief in the fog that mocks 
me like angel's plumage shed underneath
the spaghetti-pot lid.
For ghosts the fog is as close
as they get to kissing--
I was born with long corridors
that stretch like waistbands 
and tube socks-- darken
at the edges-- cattle shoots
to another time where you
and I both considered ourselves 
alive-- the first ghosts I knew
lay in sleep held in the black eyes
of stuffed teddy bears-- lurched
forward on a self-- fell for me
to catch and cradle over my brother's crib
when he was still just a 
stack of jealous pancakes--
ghosts
in a cast iron pan.
My front porch was a ghost-- cracked spine
and finger nails dug into the cancerous earth.
I knew the ghosts by name from the factory
building. The building
had bus-driver eyes and it waited
outside the old house on Franklin
Street. I learned that some ghosts
only have one arm and that ghosts like
midnights more than mornings.
My grandfather was a ghost
before he died-- a silhouette
holding a cane like a microphone or
a bouquet of flowers. My father
has always been like him
and I think he doesn't believe
in ghosts because he might just
be one-- entangled in rusted
electric guitar strings in the corner
of the attic.
My mother believes in angles
which are certainly a type of ghost
and she believes in milk blood
and saints and pancakes.
My brother is scared of the end
of corridors.
We both recite the Our Father
under our breath when we
go upstairs alone-- we have
seen so many ghosts-- so many femurs 
in the floor boards-- so many
elbow door knobs-- our house
is the assimilated skeleton
of other people's ghosts and our own--
the parts of us that are already faded
and sucked up under the lid
of the spaghetti pot.
Some people think I eat breakfast alone.
I've set aside this time for
my own ghosts and the ghosts who
wander in through the open
front door-- they like pancakes and they
like to have company in the morning when
they remember that one of us is dead.
We share coffee and stories
about all the journeys we've
taken down long corridors
only to find the closet at the
end of the hall upstairs. 

An open apology to spiders and other insects I've squashed
like marbles.

We all have spent the morning in the
uncomfortable reptilian torso of 
a Tyrannosaurus Rex-- felt his own futile 
hands of pebble and stood tall just to have
the neighbor girl look at us like the
evergreen tree that was always there
in the back yard-- the fossilized femur--
bares pine cones of bone
The neighbor girl laughs and says that you're an absurd dog.
We all have squashed insects or 
people like insects or people
like crustaceans-- clumsily--
dazed and buzzing like the hive's hung 
on our head like thorn-crowns or Romani
metal waist bands pulled loose from
the corn-cob hair of the sun. 
I deeply regret all the spiders I've killed--
all the ants under flip flops--
thousand-leggers turned to smudges--
their blood like my blood--
blue
black
mosquito-maroon red--
lipstick scabs
reptilian and crustaceans-- inky
on wallpaper-- my brother was born
a centipede and so was I. Only
one of us grew into a dinosaur
to step on everything
that scares me--
and I'm sorry that my only reaction
to fear is to stomp on things--
maybe if I were to sit down to have
tea with the spider cadavers 
in my bathroom sink 
maybe they wouldn't all turn
into balls of folded legs--
crumpled beings-- sacrificed
sparks under the over arching 
power of fear.
Drink tea with my moths
and leave my flour jars and
sugar bowls 
until the morning-- I'm
scared of that dust you carry down from
the stars.
I've only ever stepped on marbles--
broken marbles-- the little 
earths of the spider eyes--
nothing broken
but the pine cones of bone.
I'm sorry spiders-- I'm sorry marbles--
I'm sorry to my brother
the centipede.
and to the myself
for becoming so reptilian. 

My father and I with jelly bean teeth.

My father and I are candy people
and the first time I cut my knee riding my
bike behind his I noticed that my
leg bones were woven from licorice--
the cherry kind that you can peel apart
if you have patience-- my father
doesn't have patience so his knee bones
are knots of black licorice rope-- the
type that only dad and I like--
the type that gives you green teeth--
green like my gumdrop knuckles.
my father taught me to punch boys 
with gum drops so that I could scratch their cheek
bones with the sugar crystals.
He poured a row of Mike & Ikes under my lip
to form a mouth guard-- cardboard 
movie theater box mouthful--
Told me to fight with my feet--
to fight with boys because I was
his little boy-girl rock candy warrior--
He made my sun freckles from 
skittles and the pink star burst that
he always saved for me.
The last licorice he always saved for me--
the last gummy shark
gummy fried egg
gummy bear cluster-- mutation of 
sibling cubs melted together in
the heat of the glove box of his jeep--
My father got tired of cutting my 
bangs so he tied them up with red licorice
rope-- jump rope-- rope like ladders
and rope like monkey bars-- ropes 
that held us together 
in the back of the jeep--
and I don't remember what carnival it
was but I will never forget sitting
on his lap to watch fireworks
and opening a bag of peach rings--
that we both knew were both the 
rings of Saturn and the crowns 
we gave the sunset and the waist bands
of karate uniforms and the hub caps
of a rusted blue jeep 
only we knew was bold enough 
to drive through a midnight.
We never drove to Canada but I pretend we
did. We would have eaten licorice for
breakfast and gotten cavities
so bad that they'd make us dentures 
from jelly beans-- sweet teeths 
for the sweet toothed--
More than twelve Saturdays of my life
I have had a half pound of gummy worms
for breakfast-- felt them 
wriggle as the day progressed 
and felt them make their way through 
my veins where they colored me 
the color of sunsets 
and fireworks.
My father and I still have jelly bean teeth--
and sometimes the only
way I know how to tell him 
that I remember everything we are and 
and were and will always be
is in sugar-- I still punch boys
with gum drops on my knuckles.

Burials of dress shoes and belly button moon. 

Someone mows the lawn of the graveyard
on the hill.
the graveyard where you can watch 
the moon like the belly-button of the night sky--
protruding outward warm and uncomfortable--
and we touch it.
the graveyard near the old movie theater
who still has red curtains to close.
the graveyard we sleep under when it's cold and
there's no mattresses left on bunk beds.

It's an art-- not a skill.
not any person can mow the lawn of a cemetery.
he tends the bushes into femurs-- writes
his name in the pulsing soil of a fresh grave
only to erase it with his bare foot.
he doesn't wear shoes out of superstition.
he says only dead people want shoes
because to the best of his knowledge 
every ghost that he has worked with 
has been barefoot or empty
from the waist down.

it's a disguise really.
death smells his earth and grass
caked toes and sighs and moves 
on-- besides-- who would tend 
the cemetery then?
he buried his only pair
of shoes at the far corners of the
graveyard. Separated of course.
One on each parameter. Penny loafers
from his first communion. 

it is tiring job to learn
the schedule of the residents
so as to not to disturb the breakfast
and hazelnut coffee of the families
still bickering in the mausoleums
and so as to not seem irreverent for the ghosts
sulking over their fresh graves--
they try to dig up their own bodies
and he turns off the weed wacker and
sits besides them

he says, "they'll bring flowers--
for a few years and then forget."
and it's not comforting at all
but it's what they need to hear.
ghosts like the truth.

he imagines he could plant a patch of mums
on the fresh rectangles where
bodies have just been planted
the same as penny loafers.
but he worries it would give them
false hope
and he never trusted mums or marigolds
for the matter--
unknown to most of the population
only ghosts can plant mums and marigolds--
living people only think they do.

there not many perks to mowing the
lawn at the cemetery. he smells too
much like death and ghosts and fog
to fall in love and most bars and restaurants
have a strict "no shoes, no shirt, no
service policy". 

he goes to the movies alone
it's too dark to see his bare feet--
and he eats the stale popcorn for supper
and leaves before the ending
he always leaves before the ending
or else the grass would grow too
tall in his absence.

he is the only acceptation to visitation hours.
DAWN TO DUSK and if you look
in small print every sign for
every cemetery read "unless you
are the man who mows the lawn here."
he watches the sun set-- sitting
on a tomb stone-- lawn mower running--
fist fulls of stale popcorn.

"Do you still see the moon?"
he asks the ghosts.
"Like a belly button?"
they respond.
"Yes", he says.
"Yes", they say.
and he goes to sleep on
the warm pulsing earth.

His dreams are about only shoes
and fears about the day when he'll 
forget about death because it
will be so mundane. 
he knows one day he'll accidentally dig up
the penny loafers from
his first communion
put them on.
fall in love.
bury himself.
and mums will grow there. 

In memory of ants,
The undersides of stones,
and Martian walks through your home town. 

i was beamed down and subjected to the 
ridicule of the cicadas across the Main Street
where i learned that there is a safe
space
between the double yellow lines on Main Street
where you can't hear anything but the 
stream's blood--
-- thin yourself
into the delicate rind the of new moon that plops in the sky
like a toe nail. the invisible notion
of the last piece of raspberry cheesecake
on thawed on my uncle's counter--
simmer my skin to sugar jars--

i wish i still noticed the lighting bugs
before they dimmed themselves into jack-o-lanterns--
there was a time when so much of my life revolved around
lightning bugs and pouring sugar on the front porch to
watch how many ants it took to consume it.
i let them crawl on my legs like guests to
the sprouting forest of my hair before
i knew that people cut down the rain forest
in acres and that people cut ants in half 
with their flipflop heels and that 
people cut leg hairs in stinging orange peels.

i fed the bugs french fries and ketchup to
watch the movement of their mandibles--
the clacking castanets of the queen beneath 
the blemished earth-- my martian earth
face hides the ants of my childhood 
under my skin-- they stir when i walk along
the creek again.
only the plants reject me-- a virus--
an alien affliction-- the blood
of the stream mistakes me for Ebola
or bird flu-- and sends the mosquitoes.

i feel the gravity different now and my hands
like smaller than the locals
everyone here looks at me through
the mouths of cicadas-- my hands are more like
mandibles than five-fingers. 

i fear the ants here.

the queen told them all i'm made of sugar cubes--
the time away has turn my blood to nectar--
a buffet for the mosquito straws--i am reverted to
the kiwi-strawberry
Capri-Sun fermented from fifth grade
hidden like an orphaned sock beneath 
the kitchen cabinet.

waist deep in the stream i remember
i was supposed to catch a lightning bug this
year and put it in a jar when i took the
flight home-- because home is wherever 
the ants find me know-- they still stir for
me in between the double yellow
lines on Main Street. 

waist deep in the stream i check
the under sides of the stones for
pieces of my long brown hair,
elbow scabs, and threads from the gnarled
thigh-seams of my jeans
leftovers from a life centered 
around lightning bugs
and bags of sugar
my father kept in the glove box of
his jeep--
sugar unthawing on my uncle's counter.

i always forget something 
underneath a stone in the creek
-- a cray fish--
a light bulb-- a photograph
of me eating spearmint leave
like the girl i never was--
and i never find it again-- the stream
doesn't recognize me enough. it says
that i am no longer queen--
i don't smell like chlorine
and i'm tight like the seam
of a jar of fireflies
beneath a stone. 

but the Main Street knows. it knows that
my skin is sugar and my brown
hair is somewhere-- woven 
like a welcome mat on my legs--
it keeps the cray fish and the photographs
and the light bulb
so that i always have to come back
even when i no longer fit between
the double yellow lines
on Main Street. 

The almost thumbprint of my body in the ocean 
and why I leave the front door open at night.

I leave the door to the porch open at night
even though I'm afraid of the moths and how
their head banging reminds me of my own.
My own finger-tapped knees to search
out sleep somewhere between my joints
in a rhythm only the cicadas can follow.
Their metronomes are know to spiral from trees
like bottle rockets in archaic fury. 
It's the sound of stars falling out of their bunk-
beds and waking up in the sweaty fog of morning--
peel loose from the covers like warm string cheese.
Telling yourself again again again
I am Sirius, I am Vega, I am Urania, I am Rigel
and I take 10 billion years to wake up from
this saunter-- this unpleasant dream.

In the chance that I sleep walk tonight I hope
to wake up floating in the ocean 
instead of over my body where I 
watch myself sleep like a pork dumpling--
simmering in the cracked knuckles of the old 
cooling vents-- Turn me over and brown the edges
in old voices and new coffee tables. 
I will too become a pork dumpling 
again or maybe a spring
roll with see-through skin
and shrimps in my rib-cage
 but with the door open I can 
dip myself into the ink of night
and leave thumb prints with my sleep-feet.
Walk away from the place where
morning and night are simultaneously inevitable.

I made sketches of my chalk outline to fill in later.
I drew myself as an Apatosaurus on the street
corner between the Collegeville diner and 
Perkiomen trail-- a moth
on the great big library windows-- a crumpled
man with a baseball cap in pieces in
the supermarket parking lot where his
cart is still drifting-- I've 
only ever seen chalk outlines when people
get hit by cars-- but you can't die
in your sleep while your
body is stilling steam in pillow casing--
so I use blue chalk--and the fog washes it
away anyway.

If I did end up at the ocean I would hope that I
would be able to reach it this time--
and not returned to my bed room and wriggle
loose from the covers like the birth 
of a moth feeling how heavy their
own wings are and missing when they could
rest easy as a worm and not reach
high enough to bang their head on something--
I have walked so far and drawn myself in
so many shapes that my sleep feels like an alphabet--
or like a math equation using powers of
two as hair clips-- the other half 
of myself who has fat cells and the stretch
marks of a birch tree-- the outline of a body that
breathes heavy at the precipice of a staircase-- 
we hold each other's hands with a trail of crumbs
from confetti cupcakes I kept
from my fifteenth birthday party
back when I was only slightly terrified 
of icing.

With the porch door open I can walk the way 
back into the body of dough and the wet moth wings
wrapped around me-- washed salad leaves--
blood twin-- holding my chalk outline
in bed-- the headlights of stars
still falling. 

10 Billion years have passed.
Morning and night are still as
simultaneously inevitable
my night terrors and my
dream-body leaving my skin.